The Problem of Death

Schmidt Number: S-3017

On-line since: 30th November, 2013

The Problem of Death II

February 6, 1915
Dornach

Yesterday I told you
the story of Manon de Gaussin because it gives an actual
description of the working of the etheric organisation, the
etheric body, after death. One cannot, of course, quote
every novelistic description in such a connection because,
naturally, a writer might evolve the most unreal ideas and
one would then be quoting something that is incorrect. But
I chose an example where, in a way that accurately
corresponds with the facts of such a case, the working of
an etheric body is described.

The first truth
encountered by spiritual-scientific knowledge is that when
the human being passes through the gate of death, etheric
body, astral body and Ego are loosened from the physical
body; a kind of intermediate condition then sets in, a
condition in which, on the one side, the physical body is
still there and, on the other side, with a connection
between them; etheric body, astral body and Ego.

We know that then,
after a comparatively short time, the etheric body frees
itself, and the Ego, together with the astral body of the
human individuality, has to enter upon the further journey
through the cosmos in the period between death and a new
birth.

We must realise that
the etheric organisation, the etheric body, is destined to
maintain the earthly body of the human being through the
whole maximum age of life. A human being who has reached
advanced age, has of course, the same etheric body as when
he was a child. When a human being has to leave the
physical plane prematurely in some incarnation and the
etheric body has then separated from the astral body and
the Ego, then this etheric body is in a different condition
from the etheric body of a human being who has reached a
certain maximum age and who has therefore been able to use
the forces of this etheric body through many decades of his
earthly life. when a human being dies prematurely, the
forces that are still present in the etheric body would, if
his karma had allowed him to remain on the earth, have been
used during the further course of his life. The using of
these forces denotes a continual wearing out of the etheric
body. Therefore an etheric body which separates from one
who has died early, contains many unused forces; these
forces are preserved in the etheric body. They are forces
which have gone over into the spiritual world but which
would have been able, for a long time yet, to maintain a
physical life.

Naturally, these
forces are not destroyed when a human being has passed
through the gate of Death. For nothing — and still
less in the spiritual world than in the physical world
— is destroyed. All the forces in existence change
into other forms. The law of the conservation of force has
assumed great significance in physical science since the
year l842 when it was discovered by Julius Robert Mayer. A
force is applied in the simplest action, for example, when
the hand is rubbed over some surface. This force is not
lost; the surface gets warm; the force of the pressure and
of the rubbing is changed into warmth. No force is lost;
forces change their character. Similarly, no force is lost
in the spiritual world. So that we may say: forces of the
etheric bodies of those who have died prematurely pass over
into the spiritual world and, as they have not been used
for the earthly life, are used for the purpose of the human
individuality who is living on as Ego and astral body.

These forces which
would otherwise have been used for the individuality in his
life on the Earth, are used in the spiritual world and
remain in the elementary world. (The etheric body itself is
dissolved within the elementary world.) In the elementary
world they form a real source and reservoir of force. This
is very significant, for it sheds light, in a most concrete
way, upon the connection between the physical world and the
spiritual world.

For real knowledge
it is not enough to picture merely in the abstract that the
physical world is connected with the spiritual world, and
that the spiritual world is behind the physical world.
There is variety and differentiation in the spiritual world
which lies behind the physical world. Art that is born of
clairvoyance and has an important part to play in human
evolution on the earth owes a great deal to these unused
etheric bodies. Significant stimuli for clairvoyant
knowledge and for the knowledge that is inspired by
Spiritual Science are provided by these etheric bodies in
the elementary world.

Please realise this
thoroughly. — In a certain sense we have to thank
those who have died prematurely for the fact that their
etheric bodies have been given over to the elementary world
and that many spiritual influences can therefore proceed
from these etheric bodies. I think I need hardly say that
such influences can proceed only from souls whose
end has come in the course of natural karma and never from
a soul who has in any way willed his own death, through
suicide. In such a case things are entirely different;
fruitful forces of the etheric body are destroyed by
decisions emanating from that maya of consciousness of
which I spoke yesterday — and all decisions taken
during earthly life in regard to death emanate from this
Maya. I say this only in parenthesis.

In a very special
way the etheric bodies of which I have spoken are at the
basis of the spiritual stimuli which may come to us. The
spiritual movement we serve will owe, as we may well
realise, a very very great deal to what it is able to
receive from this side. Perhaps it is not necessary for me
to indicate how significantly our knowledge can be enriched
in the direction of the love and the reverence we bring to
our Dead by the realization of such facts and by our
learning to understand how we have to thank those who have
died in early youth, and how we have to thank those who
have died in mature age, who have taken up into their
individuality those forces which, in other circumstances,
are unused forces of the etheric body.

When somebody dies
in advanced age — and we have also had to experience
such a case recently — he has taken up into his
astral body forces which would otherwise still be in the
etheric body. He has, as it were, made human what,
under other circumstances is cosmic. And because
this is so, there goes out from him, from his
individuality, the stimulus of which I have spoken; he can
be particularly influential because these stimuli can then
be received by specific human hearts, also by the hearts of
those who do not proceed from Spiritual Science or from
clairvoyance but abandon themselves to the ordinary
impulses of life. into the souls of such men too there can
be received — I say ‘there can be
received’ — those forces — now less
cosmic but just because of that, more human — which
flow into the spiritual world in which the soul is always
imbedded.

We have now
mentioned one detail that is connected with the
“Death Spectrum” as I will call it — this
etheric organisation which remains when Ego and astral body
are released. I will call it the “Death
Spectrum” ... it contains the forces I have described,
but much else as well. In order to study what else is
contained in this death spectrum we must resort to such
matters as I tried to bring before you yesterday, derived
from Grimm's tale.

It will have been
clear to you from what I said, and also from the whole
treatment of the subject in that case, that between Manon
de Gaussin and the man who shot himself, there existed a
karmic tie which was, of course, the outcome of previous
earthly lives spent together. Karmic connections of this
kind are indicated in nearly all imaginative writings. Such
writings — above all, the most impressive of them
— take their start from the fact that these karmic
connections arising from previous earthly lives have not
been wholly lived out. Manon de Gaussin meets the man who
loves her. She does not understand his love and out of the
maya of her consciousness she resists the full and complete
living-out of karma. Hence there arises that conflict which
is very adaptable to artistic treatment; out of the maya of
consciousness human beings rebel against what is
karmically predestined.

They cannot, of
course, do away with it. I am not saying that karma can be
got rid of, for it must certainly be lived out in a
subsequent incarnation. The human being certainly cannot
escape from karma, or at least only in the very rarest
cases, and in such cases the karma has to be transformed.
But in one incarnation the soul may resist the full
living-out of karma. Consequences then arise such as those
which are dealt with in this tale. The one human being
leaves the physical plane, and karma has not taken the
shape it should have taken. But this “should”
of karma is inscribed in the nature of the man. Karma
should have been fulfilled in a certain way. We
may resist karma in one incarnation because we do not
recognise it, and then we postpone it until a later
incarnation. Nevertheless it was there within us ... it was
actually within us. We wipe karma away, as it were, from
the one life, wipe it away from the happenings of the life
between birth and death.

And so what Manon de
Gaussin and the man who loved her would have experienced if
they had fully lived out their karma, is wiped away from
their lives. It is wiped away from the physical events of
life. But from the death spectrum it cannot be wiped away
or effaced. It remains in the death spectrum as
will, and then it happens that after the death of
the human being concerned this death spectrum follows the
will of the karma that has not been lived out. So that when
Manon de Gaussin seeks and finds rest at the proper moment,
this death spectrum comes to her because there is living in
it the will which should have brought about the union of
the two. The death spectrum — so far as this is
possible — fulfils what ought to have been but has
not been fulfilled.

The connection
described in the tale has, in this respect, been truly
portrayed. This death spectrum, therefore, also contains
the karma that has not been lived out, and after the death
of the human being something takes shape in the elementary
world that is like a picture of this karma. We have to do
with two aspects — please realise this — When a
human being dies with karma that has not been lived out, he
will have to live out this karma in a subsequent
incarnation ... this will happen at some time in the future.
But in the death spectrum there arises something that is
like a prophetic picture of what will have to come about at
some time, what ought to have come about but has not.
Clairvoyant vision of the death spectrum therefore brings
an experience of destiny, of karma that has not been lived
out.

It may be said that
in the etheric spectrum of the human being after death
something happens that could have happened in life, but has
not. A picture of happenings which could have been
happenings of life may be experienced in this death
spectrum. This is a very significant esoteric connection.
The human individuality (Ego and astral body) passes over
almost immediately after death to a kind of cosmic
existence and for some days is still connected with the
death spectrum (the etheric body), so that the karma-will
of the individuality is playing from the cosmos into the
death spectrum. Then, after a few days, what belongs to the
cosmic spheres is loosened from what has received its
specific, unique character from the connection with the
physical human being and has only assumed the form of the
physical human being because it has been enclosed within
the human physical body. The Ego and the astral body have
not this physical form of the human being; but the death
spectrum, the etheric body has, in a certain respect, also
the physical form of the human being. The death spectrum
loses this human form only in the course of days. When the
soul has been freed from the physical body it loses this
human form. The physical body, through its forces, has
preserved this death spectrum in its form; but now that the
spectrum is outside the physical body, it takes on other
forms, determined by the external forces of the cosmos.

It is therefore
understandable that a true description of the emergence of
the human individuality together with the etheric body from
the physical body must indicate the death spectrum rising
up, as it were, in the form which has been that of the
physical body. if, therefore, somebody wants to describe
the moment of death truly, he will describe how the etheric
body rises up like a kind of cloud, still manifesting the
form of the physical body with its arms and other limbs,
and how this gradually dissolves into the more spiritual
forces working in from the cosmos. This is a
transformation, a metamorphosis, a transition.

The picture revealed
by clairvoyance is difficult for us, because in physical
life the human being is bound to time and space, and indeed
to those forms of time and space which are at our disposal
precisely when we are in the physical body, namely,
ordinary three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time,
with its past, present and future. And so, many people are
inclined to connect with purely spiritual perceptions,
three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time with its
past, present and future. We can speak of time and space in
connection with the spiritual world too; but there they are
altogether different. The difficulty is that words coined
for the physical world are inadequate and imperfect when
used for portrayal of the spiritual world.

In conceptions of
time in the physical world, the past is ... well, the past.
The past lies behind us and we can only preserve it in
memory. It is only the present that can be there before us
in immediate perception. In the spiritual world it is not
like this, nor even in the elementary world; there
the past can be before us just as the present is before us
in the physical world.

In the spiritual
world, therefore, we can look at what is past, what has
happened, what can only be preserved by the physical
individuality in memory. When we have passed through the
Gate of Death we can look from a later point of time at an
earlier point of time. It is just as if, from a later
period, we were looking at what is physically past as
something that is immediately present, just as from this
point where I am standing I can look, physically, into the
corner. The past is actually there, living before us,
surrounding us.

This conception is
made particularly vivid by events like one that happened
among us recently, when we attended the cremation of a dear
friend, and when her consciousness first came to itself at
the moment when the fire seized the physical body. At this
moment the consciousness began to be active. But before the
physical body was given over to cremation the burial
service was held, and it could be seen that this burial
service was vividly present to the Dead, as vividly as when
something is before us in space.
[‘Rudolf Steiner and our Dead.’
Phil. Anthr. verlag (not yet in translation)]

Such things belong,
of course, to the very deepest esotericism among us. But in
the course of many years we have been striving to make it
possible to speak among ourselves of things that are veiled
in mysteries just as one speaks of ordinary everyday
occurrences. What may be said now is this: that when these
difficult days of the war are over, our esoteric life at
all events will have to assume a much stronger and more
intimate character then, things called forth by the
suffering through which humanity has passed — I do
not mean the individual suffering which springs from
egotism but the general suffering undergone by mankind as a
whole. Because of this general suffering it will be
possible for much to be deepened in other directions, in
directions upon which silence has perforce now to be
maintained because human beings are living in a time of
general transition.

Let us think more
intimately still of the emergence of the human
individuality — of the Ego and the astral body with
the etheric body — let us think of the emergence of
the threefold man from the physical body. This is a process
which lasts for days, beginning when the human being passes
through the gate of Death. This process shows very vividly
indeed how cosmic forces may exist in the human etheric
body, but it also reveals, as we have seen, the karma that
has not been lived out. This is a process that is
individually different in different human beings; it is not
the same in two human beings. That is why it is so
difficult to describe these things. They are not the same
in two cases; they are everywhere different.

It is of course the
case that other elements, as well as this process, are
contained in the death spectrum, but I cannot describe
everything at once. If we know of two characteristic
phenomena contained in this death spectrum we already have
a more intimate picture than when we are only able to
associate the term ‘etheric body’ with this
death spectrum. Karma that has not been lived out is
contained within this death spectrum — and this makes
it possible to deal with conflicts in written works of art,
to connect this karma that has not been lived out with
processes that take place after death. All that a purely
exoteric writer can do is to portray the conflict that has
taken place in life, and then let his characters die. But
when — as for example in Shakespeare's works —
account is taken of esoteric connections in life (as I have
said on different occasions in indicating what was behind
Shakespeare), when a writer shows how things are connected
with deeper laws of life and his descriptions take account
of what lies behind the external happenings, then a work
like Hamlet can come into being. in what comes from the
spirit of Hamlet's father we see a great deal of karma that
has not been lived out, that is being transformed. The
dramatic conflict for the main character of the play, for
Hamlet, begins through the intervention of the father's
karma which has not been lived out. So an artist who is
convinced of the connection of the physical with the
spiritual world will often feel compelled not to let his
human characters simply fade out at death — as
monistic and materialistic thinkers picture to themselves
— but to indicate that this passing through death is
a beginning of new events and happenings that are still
more concrete than the concrete happenings of life between
birth and death.

In order to show how
art can seek enrichment by using earthly life as the
starting-point for the continuation which then proceeds in
the spiritual life. I have spoken about the tale from which
I also read an extract yesterday. It is interesting to find
how the experience of karma that has not been lived out can
come to a man, how he can describe it. And he may feel
compelled to say at the end of his work: ‘Here I feel
the karma that has not been lived out.’ Then he may
feel the urge to portray, in an elementary, real
Imagination, how this karma lives itself out. This can be
done if life is taken in its totality and not merely in its
physical aspect.

In this connection I
want to speak of yet another writing although I can
indicate its content only very briefly, still more briefly
than yesterday, because it is a novel of two volumes
(“Invincible Powers”, by Herman Grimm). You
will see that what is said here also portrays an element of
karma that has not been lived out. I will indicate as
briefly as possible how the story gives expression to
this.

A mother comes with
her daughter from America to Europe. The father died some
time ago in America. on their journey in Europe they meet a
man who is a descendant of an old noble family, a family
firmly rooted in the traditions of aristocracy. Many things
happen from which it at once becomes evident to those who
observe the spiritual connections of things that between
the man "“Arthur” and the two women whom he
happens to see in the street while they are going to a
theatre, there are karmic links. Anyone who watches the
events from the point of view of Spiritual Science observes
this immediately. These karmic ties lead to very intricate
situations. They take their course in such a way that the
whole present age, European culture that has grown old and
the still young American culture, are described in a great
tableau. The whole present picture of Europe and America is
described with poignant concreteness and self-surrendering
love. The representatives of these two kinds of culture are
Arthur and the two other personalities who have been
mentioned. The whole of the present time is described in
these souls and many things happen which, to those who bear
the spiritual connections in mind, immediately appear as
consequences of the karma playing between them. The
external milieu, pictured in the interplay between the
American outlook upon life and the atavistic European
outlook, is connected on the one side with the new, fresh,
untouched culture of America, and, on the other, with the
atavistic European culture that is simply subsisting on
tradition. In this whole milieu there is something that is
reflected in the souls of the characters and causes
conflict after conflict. Arthur's father who has died,
owned an estate; his whole outlook had been imbued with old
traditions of the aristocracy; with his money, or rather,
with the disappearance of his money, he was a product of
the old traditions of aristocracy, he had been obliged to
sell the estate — as happens so frequently in Europe
today. The estate has been sold, so that Arthur does not
inherit it. In the noblest way — which is not always
the case in such affairs — an improvement is brought
about in the situation as a result of the attitude taken by
the Americans to European conditions. Naturally, Emmy has
money and she is able to retrieve the estate for Arthur.
This happens, at all events is about to happen. But an
upstart of uncertain origin has remained on the scene; he
is not quite sure of his parentage but he goes about on the
estate like a tramp. The estate does not, of course, belong
to him, but he has a delusion that he is the master of it
— and now the idea comes into his head that the
estate must become his property. His point of view is that
as the estate has been re-acquired, his rights have been
violated. But his ‘rights’ are only a decadent
delusion — he regards himself as the master of the
estate which has long been mortgaged to the Bank. He goes
about as mentally deranged people are allowed to go about
when they are not dangerous. A conflict begins, in that
this man is furious about the acquisition of the property
and actually shoots Arthur on the estate when opportunity
offers. Now Emmy has already had terrible experiences; this
other experience is added to them and as a consequence of
it an illness already present in germ, develops. She is in
her twenties. Her mother brings her to Montreux and in her
illness she is cared for there by an American who is
extraordinarily well portrayed, a Mr. Wilson and some
others who are in Montreux. The description of this Mr.
Wilson is a wonderful piece of writing; the whole of North
America seems to be personified in him ... it is all made
wonderfully alive. But in spite of the care she receives
— from the doctor too, who comes into her life and is
a kind of rival to Arthur, an old friend of his — she
cannot be cured. She dies ... and her death is described. In
the light of Spiritual Science, therefore, let us observe
that here we have, in the sense, a case of karma which in
many respects has not been lived out; we have to do with
conflicts arising, in the main, between America and Europe;
it is a case of karma that simply has been brought to an
end by a shot from a gun. Anyone who realises this will
naturally ask, if he is not materialistically minded:
— “Where is the reality, what happens to this
unlived-out karma immediately after death, where will it
continue?” — This further continuance of karma
that has not been lived out will be felt by a man who is
not a materialist. If he is an artist he will feel
compelled to give some indication about it, and we actually
find such an indication at the end of the writing. I need
only read a few lines. — Arthur is dead, he has been
shot. Mother and daughter go to Montreux. Emmy is ill for
some time and in her last dream Arthur appears to her. It
is evident at once that this is no ordinary dream-picture
but an actual intervention of the real Arthur in the
physical world. The moment of death is described as
follows: —

“Between midnight and dawn she thought she had
wakened.

Her first glance at the window through which the faint
light was streaming into the room, was free and clear,
and she knew where she was. Her mother who was sleeping
near her, heard her breathing. The next minute, however,
with a weight she had never before experienced,
overwhelming fear came over her. It was no longer the
thoughts that had been troubling her the last days, but
it was as if a gigantic hand were holding all the
mountains of the earth over her on a thin thread, And at
any moment the hand might open and hurl down the great
masses which would lie upon her for all eternity. She
tried to look within herself and outside herself, seeking
for a glimmer of light; but none came. the light from the
window had vanished, her mother's breathing was no longer
to be heard, and a suffocating loneliness surrounded her.
It was as if she would never reach life again. She wanted
to call out but could not; she wanted to move but no limb
obeyed her. Everything was still and dark and no thought
would come in this terrible monotonous state of fear in
which even remembrance had departed ... and then, finally,
one thought returns: Arthur!

Wonderful to tell, it was as though this single thought
had changed into a point of light, visible to the eye.
And as the thought grew to infinite longing, so did this
light grow and expand, and suddenly seemed to divide,
unfold and take on a form ... Arthur was there before her
she saw, and finally recognised him. It was certainly he
himself. He smiled and was close beside her. She did not
notice whether he was naked or clothed, but it was he;
she knew him too well; it was he himself, no phantom who
had assumed his shape. He stretched his hand towards her
and said: ‘Come:’

Never had his voice seemed so sweet and attractive as
now.

With all the power of which she was capable, she tried to
raise her arms towards him; but she could not.

He came still nearer and stretched his hand closer to
her: ‘Come!’ he said once again.

To Emmy it was as though the power with which she tried
to bring one word through her lips would have been able
to move mountains, but she could not utter even this one
word. Arthur looked at her and she at him. One movement
of a finger now and she would have touched him. And now
the most terrible thing of all: he seemed to be going
away again: ‘Come!’ he said for the third
time. With the feeling that he had spoken for the last
time, that the dreadful darkness would again hide the
heavenly vision of him, she was filled now with a fear
that split her as the frost splits trees and made the
final effort to raise her arms to him. but the weight and
coldness which held her captive were not to be overcome..
And then, as a bud breaks and a flower grows before our
eyes, shining arms came forth from her own arms, shining
shoulders from her shoulders; these arms stretched
towards Arthur's arms and he, grasping her hands with his
hands and slowly hovering backwards, drew her with him,
together with the whole shining form that has arisen from
the body of Emmy.”

This moment of
death, this emergence of the etheric body, the passing over
of the death spectrum into the cosmic realms, is
wonderfully described. In this death spectrum, spiritually
and concretely described as it emerges from the body, there
is contained the will that is taking shape; this
death spectrum contains the karma that was not lived out
between Arthur and Emmy. I quote this second example
because you saw from the tale yesterday how the death
spectrum comes to the still living personality. But here we
have to do with two purely spiritual entities, with the
etheric body of Arthur which has already undergone many
transformations in the spiritual world and with Emmy's
emerging death spectrum. It is therefore an old
relationship, karma that has not been lived out, that is
playing between Arthur's etheric body and Emmy's death
spectrum which is just passing into the spiritual world.
Something that has not been played out in life, something
that is unlived-out karma, is proceeding here in the
spiritual world.

We must really try
to grasp in its reality what is present as the first moment
after the human individuality has passed through the gate
of Death. The unlived-out karma is freed from the
individuality — the individuality can only live out
his karma in a subsequent incarnation — it is freed,
and becomes cosmic: cosmic happenings are the
result of it. And in much that happens in the clouds, on
the mountains, in the springs, but also in much that
happens in the subconscious processes of the soul-life of
human beings living on the earth, unlived-out karma is
being expressed, karma that has taken over into the
spiritual world and is like a wellspring in this death
spectrum. For these cosmic happenings play continually into
human life; we are permeated by them, interwoven in them.
— Thus we must distinguish between what becomes
cosmic when the human being passes through the
gate of Death, and what remains individual. What
remains of the physical body becomes preeminently cosmic,
this passes over — slowly in earth burial more
quickly in cremation — into the elementary, the more
physical-elementary world of earth; and it is a gross,
materialistic idea to believe that this then simply
disappears or functions like the chemical elements. This is
nonsense, and we shall see tomorrow how it goes on living
in the planet, how significant it is for the planet.

It lives on in the
planetary life. The chemists' knowledge of what becomes of
the physical body amounts to nothing at all; for the earth
has its essential subsistence from the fact that human
beings have died upon it — its more important forces
are derived from this source. The earth has its subsistence
from the physical nature of human beings who have died.
here, therefore, something becomes cosmic from the physical
body; the other becomes cosmic from the etheric body. And I
have tried today to indicate what becomes cosmic from the
ether-aura; what remains, and has become cosmic lives on as
individuality in the higher spiritual world. You will find
it mentioned in
more detail in the books “Theosophy” or
“An outline of Occult Science.” This lives on
as individuality and I will speak about it tomorrow. But we
must realise that what lives on individually begins to live
in new conditions which differ essentially from the
ordinary conditions of earthly existence.

Careful study of the
Vienna lecture-course on the life between death and a new
birth will give you a conception of what happens during
this period. We cannot really understand the nature of the
conditions which prevail between death and a new birth if
we have not made these conceptions alive within us. The
Time that is presented to our physical outlook as
past, present and future, continuing onwards in a straight
line, is really a physical Maya. At death we enter into a
different world, where the past exists not only in memory,
but is actually present; it is all around the human being
who is living in conditions where his inner being is
revealed as his outer being; his inner being of soul is
there in direct manifestation — the being who has
shaped the body as well as the physical incarnation between
birth and death.

The way in which we
must approach one who has passed through the Gate of Death
is not an act of external perception but an inner sharing
of his experiences. The individuality is fully present when
the Gate of Death has been passed, although, as I have
said, the human being has to find his bearings and
direction within his superabundant consciousness. But what
he is in himself, the essential core of his being, is there
as a real presence, although it may not as yet be connected
with his consciousness. It is there. What a man is
in his essential being can be seen, and the experiences
shared.

When I have spoken
during the sad occasions caused by the recent loss of dear
friends, I have always tried to speak out of their
being. I will give one or two indications — as far as
this is permissible here — concerning the last three
friends who have died. I have tried simply to speak out of
these souls themselves, as it were to let them speak with
me. And when I look back I realise that there were very
good reasons for speaking quite differently in each of the
three individual cases — for human beings are
individually different. I admit quite frankly that this was
not in my consciousness when the words were coined. It came
entirely out of the situation itself. Moreover words which
have to be coined for Spiritual Science and also for the
life into which Spiritual science leads us, are coined and
unfold in the best and truest way when they are absolutely
uncolored by any wish emanating from life. if we are to
sneak truly and accurately in the domain of Spiritual
Science we must keep entirely aloof from any wish to coin
this or that in a particular way. We must hold at a
distance every wish that things might be this or that.

When it is a
question of speaking at the cremation of a dear friend
there is naturally no wish to speak the words that
were actually uttered. In such circumstances the words will
certainly not be spoken out of any wish, but only out of
the necessity. For naturally, the only wish that could be
present in such a case is that such words should not have
to be spoken. This attitude helps the coining of the words.
To me it was very significant — and I say this
without any pretensions whatever that in the case of dear
Frau Grossheintz I had to speak simply as the organ of
expression for this soul.

A soul who had
passed through a long earthly life, who in her last years,
with so much determination and energy, had united all her
forces with the impulses of Spiritual Science ... united
them in a way that perhaps only a few among us have done ...
who had made Spiritual Science one with her own initiatives
in life — such a soul then passes through the Gate of
Death into a life that arises not as a theoretical life but
as a life of real and vital impulses, born of Spiritual
Science. This life is actually there, even if the soul has
not yet wakened sufficiently to be aware of it. It is the
characteristic element in the being who is becoming free.
And so you will admit that the words I had to speak (at the
cremation) actually contain what I will call: transformed
Spiritual Science, Spiritual Science that has become will,
that has become feeling. This soul had had a long earthly
life and passed through the gate of Death with mature
etheric forces. One was compelled in this case, to speak
entirely out of the soul itself. The main words necessarily
took a form as if the soul itself were speaking:

The inner mobility
and life of this soul is revealed in that the first time
(at the beginning of the service) the words had to be:
“Entgegen meinem Seelensterne,” and at the end
of the service: “Entgegen meinem
Schicksaltsterne.”

It is the nearness
one must have to the soul who has passed through the Gate
of Death which calls forth such words — words which
are characteristic of the being of the individuality after
death.

What I have to say
concerning the other two cases will be said tomorrow.